Gateway to Adventure, by Pat Honeyborne

Gateway to Adventure, by Pat Honeyborne. Gamsberg Macmillan Publishers (Pty) Ltd. Reprint. Windhoek, Namibia 2022. ISBN 9789991604243 / ISBN 978-99916-0-424-4

Gateway to Adventure, by Pat Honeyborne, who was soldier, shop assistant, author, policeman, youth leader, journalist, family man and "uncle" to a younger generation in South West Africa.

A solitary camel appeared on the skyline. The beast's dust-rimmed nostrils flared as it sensed the promise of water. The rider, hunched over with exhaustion, raised his head and muttered a few words of encouragement, then, jerking on the line leading to a pair of baggage camels in the rear, began to urge his mount down a gentle slope. The route led across the sand-blown site of the Masonic Temple, through a wilderness of drooping succulents, rusting tin cans, blowing newspapers and the dingy discards of civilisation. Camel hooves, churning splay-footed through the sand, disregarded the boundary line of the cricket field, ploughed sacrilegiously across the cricket site, through the school library and welfare clinic and past a collection of nondescript pondokkies built on the spot where the inhabitants of the teacher's single quarters now dream, blissfully unaware. The east wind was blowing as it has blown since the peaks of the Richtersveld first showed on the horizon, but seemingly hotter and more arid than the torrid caress known to the Oranjemunders of the seventies. The lumbering beasts snorted with impatience. Harness jingled as the pace quickened and the rider straightened into a weary semblance of attention. The team jogged on, straight through the accounts office, past another collection of corrugated hovels, and reined to a halt in Chris Gericke's lounge. This scene actually happened, not once but many times as part of the home-coming routine of Sergeant L.O. Honeyborne of the South West Africa Police in Oranjemund circa 1934. Pat Honeyborne died on Friday, 26 October 1973, at his home in Knysna and was buried in a quiet family ceremony attended only by a few friends, his widow Jess and children Cherry and Patrick. Llewellyn Orlando Honeyborne was born on 15 June 1904 in Beaufort West as son of Mr and Mrs C.B. Honeyborne. He first came to South West Africa in 1925 and worked as a shop assistant in Keetmanshoop. But his life was too prosaic for a young romantic who had served in the Duke of Edinburgh's Rifles as part of the Active Citizen Force. The call of the Police Camel Corps, whose stirring comings and goings were a part of the daily life in Keetmanshoop, proved irresistible. He joined the South West Africa Police Force in October 1926. After training in Windhoek, Pat was posted to Walvis Bay and Conception Bay in 1927 and patrolled the coastline, a treacherous area of moving dunes and quicksands. As a young constable he was early initiated into the wiles of the illicit diamond buyers. Their cupidity never tired of inventing new methods to test Police vigilance. A favourite trick was to bribe natives, coloureds or the odd poor white, with the promise of a rich reward, and then send them into the diamond area to try their luck. It was part of Pat's duties to track these people down. Few of them had any adequate knowledge of the territory or first-hand experience of the gruelling climatic conditions. Quite often the end of the trial for Pat was the grisly task of preparing a makeshift grave in the sand and the penning of a few lines in his notebook for the magistrate. Pat was later transferred to the Kuiseb River area and the "back o' beyond" of Walvis Bay. [...]

This is an excerpt from Gateway to Adventure, by Pat Honeyborne.

Title: Gateway to Adventure
Author: Pat Honeyborne
Publisher: Gamsberg Macmillan Publishers (Pty) Ltd
Reprint. Windhoek, Namibia 2022
ISBN 9789991604243 / ISBN 978-99916-0-424-4
Softcover, 15 x 21 cm, 231 pages, numerous b/w photographs